Posted on 02/10/2005 1:15:21 PM PST by missyme
United Kingdom (AP) -- Two people vomited, two wet their pants, another suffered signs of hypothermia _ all for the cameras _ after volunteering to spend 48 hours locked up in cages and subjected to sexual humiliation, forced nudity and sleep deprivation allegedly like prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.
A British television station plans to air "The Guantanamo Guidebook," a program that recreates some alleged techniques used at the U.S. prison camp for terrorist suspects.
Channel 4 says it wants to make the public aware of such abuses, but a human rights group said Wednesday the program violates U.N. conventions banning torture and shouldn't be shown. America's Double Standards
"Your program may have undesirable effects of acclimatizing the audience to the use of torture. The real issue is: how do we make an end to impunity for torturers," said Brita Sydhoff of the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims in Denmark. The group represents 200 rehabilitation centers for torture victims.
The show's producers say they have recreated some of the milder forms of alleged abuse used at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The methods used on seven volunteers included religious and sexual humiliation, forced nudity, sleep deprivation and extreme temperatures, Tim Carter, the show's producer and director, said Wednesday.
The volunteers were locked in a warehouse with cages, interrogation rooms and surveillance equipment for 48 hours. In the end, after getting sick or suffering symptoms of hypothermia, three of the seven volunteers quit before the 48 hours was over, Carter said.
"We made the program to show viewers how devastating even the milder techniques such as sleep deprivation and playing on personal phobias can be," said Carter, who made the program for the Twenty Twenty Television production company in London.
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The Bush administration has denied using torture at the Guantanamo prison, where many of the 545 detainees are held without charge. However, some detainees have said they were wrongly imprisoned and allege mistreatment, including beatings, forced nudity and sexual humiliation.
Tom Wilner, a lawyer for 11 Kuwaiti prisoners, recently told The Associated Press that most of his clients falsely confessed to belonging to Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime or the al-Qaida terror network as a way to stop alleged abuse.
Carter said many forms of purported abuse at Guantanamo have been publicly described by alleged victims, their lawyers and in memos and other documents released under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act.
A broadcast date for "The Guantanamo Guidebook" has not been announced, but Yad Luthra, a spokesman for Channel 4 in London, said it is one of four programs dealing with torture planned for a one-week period in the next month.
Carter said TV stations in other countries have expressed interest in the show, but none has bought the rights.
The other programs include a documentary by Clive Stafford Smith, the first British lawyer allowed into Guantanamo, that explores the issue of whether torture ever works when used on alleged terrorism suspects.
Another by former BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan is about how the United States and other nations allegedly take terrorist suspects outside the country to torture them.
Gilligan resigned from the British Broadcasting Corp. after a senior judge, Lord Hutton, criticized his story in 2003 that alleged Prime Minister Tony Blair's office had "sexed up" an intelligence dossier about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction before the Iraq war.
The fourth Channel 4 documentary is about alleged torture in U.S. prisons.
How about airing the torture inflicted by Saddam on his people.
nikos
Hopefully the Brits will be able to give us some ideas on how we can better torture detainees.
In otherwords, it's as fictitious as "Dr. Who."
England has gone completely, merrily, mad.
I guess disgruntled so-called journalists in the U.K. have nothing better to do. They certainly wouldn't want to cover their own prison system, their own military secrets, or even the sexual antics of their royals.
At least we now know how to interrogate a BBC employee.
Will it include pictures of Charles and Camilla?
Yes, exactly. What they're concerned about is that the program will result in the audience saying "that's it?" and forgetting about an issue they've spent so much time and trouble hyping.
"Two people vomited, two wet their pants, another suffered signs of hypothermia _ all for the cameras"
Sounds like a frat party, not that I would know what a frat party is like.
The initiation to my college fraternity had more torture than what these people endured...
nick
Gee can we use the French to do the show?
From what I hear the al quaida terrorist in Gitmo haven't even talked at all and the ones we have released have gone back to killing.
They must be cut from slightly different cloth than a bunch of pansie a** socialist Brits.
British torture would be making them watch Benny Hill.
Channel 4, Michael Moore's favorite British TV station.
Oh no! Don't make the Brits watch the dreaded panties on the head torture. How inhumane can they get?
How about a show about 'Al qaeda torture technics'.
Maybe they could just cut off a couple of heads. (/sarc)
We should run a special on how Britain was going to saturate Germany with Anthrax during WWII.
Cry me a freakin' river. Guantanimo isn't going anywhere.
THEY'RE JUST ISLAMIC FASCISTS!!! WHO GIVES A CRAP!!!
"The horror. The horror."
Goodness! There are people in the US who would gladly pay for this sort of treatment. Why is it being given free to GitMo terrorists who raped, tortured, maimed and killed lots of people?
If a UK TV station wants to investigate torture techniques, they should look closer to home and do a documentary on 'Camp Breadbasket', where UK soldiers were photographed abusing prisoners in a manner reminiscent of Abu Ghraib.
All this alleged torture??
Is this not tantamount to beheading???
/sarcasm>
Whatever has happened in Abu Ghrab or Gitmo can not compare to what the British did in the Maze Prison, a British prison in the North of Ireland.
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